Frontal cortex emesis between novels.

The Prayer of the Helper Monkey

Dearest Lord Jesus, bastion of compassion, He who tolerated the constant faithless questions of disciples who saw You turn water to wine, heal the sick, & even raise a fricken dead guy from, well, the DEAD but they were still worried about where they’d get a nosh, please help me.

I am a helper monkey. I’m a luxury in the first world. Most people on this planet walk 20 miles for a gallon of clean water, or have been raped by gangs of “soldiers”, or hate monkeys because they steal their food or crap on their house or whatever monkeys do in the wild. What do I know? I’m a trained helper monkey.

I like helping people. Sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m helping Jack nor Shit & I realize, Lord, it’s because sometimes folks are help-resistant. They have become intimate with their misery & it’s the only thing they own, so if they can feed its bloated belly, they will stuff that motherfucker until it pukes. It usually pukes on me, but that’s my job. I’m a helper monkey.

I am sad when I can’t help people. I am angry for them & at them. I have been where they are, & they are reminding me of how well I kept my misery. I had a little bed for it & Fancy Feast & I even bought it little outfits, God help me. It scratched me & it pooped in my shoes, but it was mine. Eventually the thing destroyed my couch & pissed on the few people willing to come over & then it gave me scabies. I asked You if You could take it & You said yes. You took it to Your SPCA in the sky & found out it had some kind of hormone imbalance & also needed to be neutered. You changed it into Experience & since I was already over the zoning limit with other Experiences, You gave it to some nice kid who needed to pad his résumé. That was nice.

One day the people I’m helping, who are help-resistant but who keep coming to me for reasons only You know, will also give their misery to You & You will transform it. Right now they share it with me & I try to help them tame it. I even tell them to give it to You, but they’re either afraid of You because they equate You with some heinous jerk authority figure from their past, or because they mistake the stuff they’re now doing to themselves with stuff they assume You did. I try to explain You don’t hurt people or punish them but they can’t imagine they’re hurting themselves. It’s so hard to bring to light.

So I guess I’m not really praying to You for me. I’m praying for them. Please heal them. They shouldn’t need me any more. I know they won’t initially recognize Your healing as it requires change and change is SCARY but eventually they’ll realize they can’t stay the same & expect things to get better. I’m cheering them on. I wish they knew that. I think they hate me.